The Erasure of Maya Angelou’s Sex Work History
As Black History Month draws to a close, we thought revisiting Peech’s seminal essay on Maya Angelou would be appropriate. Dr. Maya Angelou, American Poet Laureate, most famous for authoring I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, passed away at age 86 on May 28th, 2014. Her literary agent Helen Brann confirmed the news to press, and thus began a worldwide outpouring of grief. The top trending tag on Twitter was “RIP Maya Angelou” and, at the time of this writing, it is one of four Maya Angelou-related trending hashtags. She is hailed as a national best selling author, a genius, a spiritual God-, Grand-, and mother.
Rancière, for Dummies
by Ben Davis Jacques Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics, 116 pp., Continuum, 2006, $12.95. The 66-year-old French philosopher Jacques Rancière is clearly the new go-to guy for hip art theorists.
Manga
Manga (漫画, Manga?) are comics created in Japan, or by Japanese creators in the Japanese language, conforming to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century.[1] They have a long and complex pre-history in earlier Japanese art.[2] The term manga (kanji: 漫画; hiragana: まんが; katakana: マンガ; listen ; English /ˈmæŋ.ɡə/ or /ˈmɑːŋ.ɡə/) is a Japanese word referring both to comics and cartooning. "Manga" as a term used outside Japan refers specifically to comics originally published in Japan.[13]
Jacques Rancière - Professor of Philosophy
Jacques Rancière (b. 1940 in Algiers) is Professor Emeritus at the Université de Paris (St. Denis). He first came to prominence under the tutelage of Louis Althusser when he co-authored with his mentor Reading Capital (1968). After the calamitous events of May 1968 however, he broke with Louis Althusser over his teacher's reluctance to allow for spontaneous resistance within the revolution. Jacques Rancière is known for his sometimes remote position in contemporary French thought; operating from the humble motto that the cobbler and the university dean are equally intelligent, Jacques Rancière has freely compared the works of such known luminaries as Plato, Aristotle, Gilles Deleuze and others with relatively unknown thinkers like Joseph Jacototy and Gabriel Gauny.
Giovanni Sollima
Giovanni Sollima (born 24 October 1962 in Palermo, Sicily, Italy) is an Italian composer and cellist. He was born into a family of musicians and studied cello with Giovanni Perriera and composition with his father, Eliodoro Sollima, at the Conservatorio di Palermo, where he graduated with highest honors. He later studied with Antonio Janigro and Milko Kelemen at the Musikhochschule Stuttgart and at the Universität Mozarteum Salzburg. As a composer, Sollima's influences are wide ranging, taking in jazz and rock, as well as various ethnic traditions from the Mediterranean area.[1] Sollima's music is influenced by minimalism, with his compositions often featuring modal melodies and repetitive structures. Because his works are characterized by a more diverse and eclectic approach to material than the early American minimalist composers, the American critic Kyle Gann has called Sollima a postminimalist composer.[2]
Hatred of Democracy
I read Ranciere's Hatred of Democracy yesterday. There is something appealing in his discussion of the scandal of democracy, although, ultimately, I'm not convinced of his underlying thesis. What's appealing? Ranciere's emphasis on chance (he gets here via a reading of Plato). The drawing of lots attests to a form of government that allows a role for chance, that is, for those with no claim to rule actually to rule. Ranciere argues, then, that democracy is well understood as a law of chance.
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard (/ˌboʊdriːˈɑr/;[1] French: [ʒɑ̃ bodʁijaʁ]; 27 July 1929 – 6 March 2007) was a French sociologist, philosopher, cultural theorist, political commentator, and photographer. His work is frequently associated with postmodernism and specifically post-structuralism. Life[edit] Baudrillard was born in Reims, northeastern France, on 27 July 1929.
Ignorant Schoolmaster - Studyplace
From Studyplace Joseph Jacotot (1770-1840) Jacotot was a French instructor who taught subjects as far-ranging as French, literature, mathematics, ideology and law (p. 1). He had a profound realization one time when he had to teach a group of Flemish students French.
